


Quiet

by 12gatsunohime (inkstainedwretch)



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: F/M, Grell is transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-09
Updated: 2011-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 08:20:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26848831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkstainedwretch/pseuds/12gatsunohime
Summary: Set immediately after the Jack the Ripper arc, what happens when Grell comes back to the office. Also references the shinigami OVA.
Relationships: Angelina Dalles | Madame Red/Grell Sutcliff, William T. Spears/Grell Sutcliff
Kudos: 2





	Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to livejournal, [here](https://12gatsunohime.livejournal.com/127395.html).

I'll be frank; when you're getting the life kicked out of you by a (charming, seductive, much more of a threat than you initially thought) demon, and your supervisor/best friend/Friday night date/boyfriend(?) steps in, the first thing you expect him to do is _not_ to stomp your face into the ground. Likewise, the second, third, and fourth thing you expect him to do is not to continue doing so, throw you across the alley, and then drag you away by your hair. To be honest, I do love it when Will's rough with me, but I didn't expect him to go that far. 

That's not what hurts, though. Physically, it hurt quite a bit, especially after nearly being killed with my own scythe, but not near as much as the look he gave me after he brought me back to headquarters. He at least stopped dragging me on the ground by that point, but he still had a hand on the back of my collar the whole walk to my desk, and he wouldn't even look me in the eye until he'd gotten the forms for a written apology and summary of all the damage I'd done. When he did, though, he didn't look angry, or hurt, or anything else I rather expected him to be. 

He just looked at me like he didn't know me anymore. 

It confused me, at first. The whole time I wrote the (rather insincere) apology letter and listed off all the girls I'd made over with a kind of hazy nostalgia, I wondered what on earth made him so distant, looking at me like...like I should have _known better_? This was hardly the first time one of the reapers had killed someone not on the list yet. And really, I hadn't even been gone that long. It was such a grand adventure, though, so amazingly cathartic, to find a soul so alike to my own and dance the most beautiful dance with her, turning our misery and envy into screeching, splashing crimson across the cobblestone canvas...By the time I left, much later than usual, Will was still at his desk, and he didn't look up when I passed by his office.

That brings me to where I am now, back at home, sprawled out on the sofa with an ice pack over my eyes. It's been a while since I've set foot in here, and it's the familiar sight and feel and smell of my living room that makes the fact that the adventure is over really sink in. I knew it wouldn't last forever by a long shot, but it was fun while it lasted. Oh, was it fun. 

The pure joy that the memory brings, the gleam of metal and the glisten of lip color and the roar of my faithful scythe all bubbling up inside my chest, is hampered a bit when I remember Will's detachment. What on earth made him pull that face? I would understand if he was outright angry at me, really, I would. I don't think William ever really understood the fact that there is more than enough love in my heart for two people, and I didn't tell him where I was going before I ran off (I didn't exactly plan on it, after all), but he just gave me the same look that he gives new recruits when they mess something up on the final exam, like I missed some concept I should know by now. 

Ah, whatever. I decide not to think about it until morning and set about drawing myself a bath. 

\---

The next morning, I find out I've been sent to the stock room. For the next six weeks, I'm supposed to take inventory of the death scythes and issue them out. But I can't even actually touch them, let alone use one, and mine has been confiscated until my probation is up. 

I think Will's a little angrier than he let on. 

When lunch hour hits, I head to his office as quickly as I can to see if I can get him to tell me what exactly he's so upset about, and how I'm supposed to fix it.

His office door is locked, and he won't open after I knock, after call to him, or even when I start pleading with him. 

Will is _definitely_ angrier than he let on. 

\---

That doesn't stop me from trying again every day, though. He never opens his door, but that doesn't deter me, any. I'm going to get through to him if it's the last thing I do. I try everything I know - a note slipped under his office door, flower deliveries, I even bake him a cake and have Ronald take it to his office. All of it just ends up in the trash, though, even the cake (I had even put strawberries on top! That's a crime against baking!), and Ronald refuses to do any more deliveries for me. "Let me know when you kiss and make up, in the meantime I'm going to be eating lunch with the new girl in the glasses department", I believe were his exact words. 

My entire probationary six weeks is like this, with me spending my entire lunch hour sitting outside his office door, and with him resolutely avoiding me both in and out of work. I discover on the third day he's changed the lock on his apartment door, and I _really_ don't think he'd appreciate my entering through the loose window screen in his kitchen he still hasn't noticed (I check, just in case, and sure enough, he hasn't fixed it). It's really annoying, how he keeps himself all boxed up like this. It's not like him to just shut me out completely. It used to be if I did something to make him angry, he would tell me right away. Now, though, he's just closed himself off. 

It's lonely. 

I come home at night to nothing, not even the memory of a conversation had over lunch. Just me, and the still, unfeeling walls. I wake up without the excitement I used to have of knowing I'd see him at work, because even if I do, it will be from at least twenty feet away, and only for a moment. After a while, I give up trying to talk to Will through his door and simply eat lunch outside of it by habit, sitting with my back against the wall wondering if, perhaps, today will be the day he opens the door.

It never is.

\---

It's even worse the day I get out of the stock room, because he doesn't even acknowledge my return. That whole morning is miserable, and I get myself out on the field as soon as I can just to get away from the tension in the office, itself. There's a small glimmer of hope, though, when I come back for lunch and his office door is open. I want to rush in and jump on him, squeeze the air out of him and tell him how much I've missed him, but there is a glass-sharp kind of silence coming from inside the door, and if that weren't enough, the look Ronald gives me on his way out to meet the girl from the glasses department (Anna, I believe; he must be serious about her if it's been this long) is enough of a warning to make me slow down considerably. 

"Will?" I sort of lean in through the doorframe. "Is...is it alright?" 

He doesn't say anything. He won't even look at me. 

"Will, I keep trying to tell you I'm sorry," I continue, hoping if I say the right thing it will get a reaction. "It's easy for me to get caught up in something, and I really should have told you where I was..." 

Still nothing. He's holding the fork he was presumably going to eat his salad with, but it doesn't look like he's actually made any motion to do so. 

"And..." what else, what else, "I don't know how much of what I said you actually heard, but you have to know it was all a game to me, really. I do love a challenge, you know, and even though I know you don't really understand it, no one has ever replaced your position in my heart. I mean that." 

I do. 

"And I just..." he's still not looking up at me, now I'm grasping for something to go by. "If I got the department into any trouble, I'm sorry, I never meant for that to happen--"

He snaps his head up to look at me, and right when I think I've finally got it, I realize I was completely wrong, because Will's eyes could freeze a flame in place. 

"Do you seriously think _that's_ what the problem is?" he hisses at me. "Do you seriously believe I would be childish enough to let a departmental inconvenience interfere that much with my personal life?"

This catches me completely off-guard, because I have absolutely no idea what else he could be on about - until I see his hand snap up to the side of his face, fingers tracing reflexively behind his eye. Right where the cinematic record pierced his skin.

"Oh, god." 

"It's a lot easier to deal out death where it doesn't belong when you're not the one being killed." 

That's right. Will knows the feeling of death, the raw and frantic passion and panic and desperate struggle not to let it take you. He's felt the pain, the sorrow, the bitter fury of a man whose life was stolen from him by time and chance. And I saved him from that pain.

...only to bring it upon others. 

Now, I see. 

"Oh, William." I give in to the urge to put my arms around his shoulders. "I should have realized." 

"Yes," he says, his voice still frosty, "you should have." 

I don't really know what to do. I'm not sorry I did it - the vibrant, violent frenzy of those few, precious days is a memory I won't ever regret - but I am sorry I caused him more pain. 

"I'm sorry," I murmur into his shoulder, though I don't say what I'm sorry for, "I'd say I understand, but I don't. I've never felt the pain of dying firsthand. There have been a couple of cinematic records that have upset me, yes, but I don't know what it does to your soul." 

William doesn't say anything, but he does put one of his hands over mine, which I take as a good sign. 

"Even if you can't forgive me right now," I continue, "could we perhaps start again? Try to rebuild this broken little bridge?" 

He takes a long time to answer. I don't mind; he tends to think before he speaks, an ability I never developed.

"It will take time." he says softly. It sounds like he wants to continue, but he doesn't. That's alright. 

"I can wait."


End file.
